Emotional Intelligence is the ability to understand, regulate and control your emotions. This ability will make you more successful in all your relationships as you can understand, read or adapt to others emotional state to have better communication with them.
In Emotional Intelligence, empathy doesn’t mean you have to agree with the other person or feel they are justified in the way that they feel. Empathy just means that you can understand how, from the other person’s point of view, they might feel the way they do via Communicating with Emotional Intelligence | Learning Tree Blog
For example, in any marriage, if you can understand your spouse’s feelings when they have a loss whether of their favorite team or favorite T-shirt and either express empathy or not aggravate the situation with scorn, you will have a better deeper relationship together.
As there can be a cultural difference between religious backgrounds or even between generations, you being able to adapt and show compassion, you will be more successful as a leader whether as a boss, team leader or coach.
According to Jeff Haden of inc.com, there is quite a difference between the Millennials and Generation Z so you can imagine the gap with babyboomers! They have never been taught how it is to fail at anything! Well, business is all about failing and being able to recover from failure so understanding this generational gap, you can be more compassionate with your employees of a certain age.
Generation Z tends to have more helicopter parents, parents who are afraid to let their kids take risks and don’t want to see them fail. …
In effect they haven’t been given the opportunity to learn how to fail, and that failure is okay from Emotional Intelligence, Generation Z, and the Next Big Leadership Challenge
Just as you have to be a leader in your business and work with your employees then you also need to be a leader if you are working with a team in sports. According to article on connectedcoaches.org, one of the reasons the British women’s hockey team won gold at the last Olympics was the emphasis put on Emotional Intelligence methods like empathy and compassion and have more social time together.
Having a much better understanding of your performers or fellow coaches (empathy) and being able to see it from their point of view is only going to enhance the situation and lead to a better environment and culture via Smells like team spirit: How to create a winning culture through the use of emotional intelligence
Having Emotional Intelligence just requires being aware of what are your emotions and then making the choice not to have that emotion or change it to emotion for better communication. Emotional intelligence is the skill of knowing why you feel the way you do and then choosing to feel different via 7 Clear Signs That Your Emotional Intelligence Is Lower Than it Should Be
To train yourself for a higher EQ, try 5 Quick Tips to Improve your Emotional Intelligence